A Popping Heart Tutorial

This is a cute Valentine’s day card I made for the new Israeli Scrap site. It’s an awesome site which provides a fresh and inspiring stage for Israeli scrappers to shine on. Scrap.co.il was created and is being run by the lovely Michal Shoval It is constantly being updated with articles, links and tutorials. Make sure to check it out!

As for this card, it’s a cross pop up mechanism, very simple and fun. You can change the heart shape into any other symmetric shape. I decided to make this card quite wide in order to allow for a large heart shape. If you follow the simple principles described below, you can make a card of any size and shape. Good luck!

1. Cut the base of your card from card stock or heavy weight paper. I’ve made mine a 28X10 cm, to create a long 14X10 cm card when closed. Score a center fold.

2. Use a scrap of paper to create the template for your center shape. Fold the paper in half and draw half of the shape. Cut it and open up the fold to receive a symmetric heart (or any other shape, for that matter). Important – when still folded, the heart’s widest point shouldn’t be wider than a third of the card’s side. To better understand this, have a look at the photo in step 3.

3. Place the heart shape on the card’s side and make sure it’s not wider than 2/3 of it. If the card’s side measures 14 cm (“3X”), then the heart’s width should be 2/3 of that – 9.333 cm (“2X”) or less. If it’s any bigger, it’ll peek out when the card is closed, and ruin the surprise!

4. Use the template to create 2 identical hearts from card stock. Do not fold these in the middle.

5. Make a narrow slit along the center of the heart shapes: one should run from the top of the heart to the middle of it, and the other from the bottom to the middle. Please note I’ve made my slits pretty wide for demonstration purposes, try to make them more slender (but make sure to take a bit of paper off, a cut-through won’t be enough).

6. Take another piece of card stock, preferably the same kind as the base of the card. Cut a long strip and score folds in it as shown (“X” being half of the heart on it’s widest point). Don’t forget to leave a small gluing tab.

7. Fold the scored lines and add glue to the gluing tab. Glue the stripe into a closed loop.

8. Slide the two hearts into one another.

9. You’ll receive a double layered heart with a “hinge” in the middle.

10. Flatten the stripe and apply glue to one of the stripes’ faces.

11. Glue the stripe to the heart, as close to the middle “hinge” as possible.

12. Add glue to the opposite face of the stripe.

13. Close the heart on top of the strip and press firmly. Let the glue set.

14. Apply glue to the two faces of the stripe that pop out of the heart, and glue it to the base of the card, as close to the center fold as you can. Close the card firmly and let the glue dry.